Home > Consumer Reviews > Polk Audio R15 2-Way Bookshelf Loudspeakers (Pair, Black)

I bought these speakers because the price was so low for such a well known name. I've always wanted to try out some Polks and they didn't disappoint. I have Avid bookshelf speakers and Bose bookshelf speakers as well. I did a side by side comparison and the Polks blew the others away hands down. For $40.00 dollars you won't find a better deal. They have a well balanced, rich, full sound. Plenty of bass and beautiful highs and midrange sounds. Wonderful imaging. I originally bought one pair to use as my fronts on my home theater. They sounded so good I got two more pair. One pair to use as my surrounds and one pair to use as my main stereo speakers.

They have such an amazing sound that I have been listening to CDs I haven't listened to in years just to hear the rich full sounds that the Bose couldn't come close to.

These speakers need about 8 hours to break in. After that you will never listen to anything but Polk again! Hats off to Polk for producing an affordable speaker that sounds amazing.

For a small speaker, at well under two hundred dollars (I'd say closer to one hundred dollars would be a fair price) these Polks outperforms larger speakers in the same price range. I would look on eBay for the best deals.

Weirdly enough, the R20s which you'd think would be better given its higher model number, actually sound much worse than these---the R15 has a better tweeter which means better mids and highs.

Of course you wouldn't ever want to use these are your two front mains unless you were using it mainly for home theatre and/or low and moderate volume listening, and also had a powered subwoofer to deliver the bass. They would probably do just fine as surround speakers, though.

Now if you were looking for really good quality small speakers I'd recommend Ascend Acoustics CBM-170s or Paradigm Mini-Monitors, the Ascends are availabe only online direct and cost up to three times as much but if you read their reviews on audioreviews dot com you'll see why.

I have always a big fan of electronics, and although I never really got around to testing certain brands and their products until a few years ago, I still got to it soon enough to have a lot of fun.

I worked at a Future Shop in Toronto a couple of years back, and found myself dealing with some brands of speakers I wasn't familiar with, but ended up liking a couple of them. Polk Audio ('What? Poke Audio???' I thought, before I saw the correct spelling on their logos) was one of them, and although I wasn't thrilled about their line we were carrying (the 'R' series), I still found three of them to be pretty cool.

The R15 bookshelf speakers were massivly popular. Partly because they were the cheapest Polk's in our store (but even brand new, they were a whoppin' $400.00!), and they were small, which is what some people like. They are wall mountable, yet regardless of where you put them, I found them pretty good looking. I like them better with the grill off, showing off it's very simple retro 90's look. Wow, now the 90's are getting to be retro.

At 100 watts per channel, these little guys can pump out the sounds well. The R15's are front ported, which I like better. Ever have a speaker that's rear ported, and socks it's power into the wall behind it? Sounds like crap. The driver is a 5.25 inch mineral filled polymer cone that does whatever it can to deliver bass / partial midrange on a small scale. Look, I know that this is a 'bookshelf' speaker, so what can I expect? Still, I've heard other bookshelf speakers with more beef, and I don't even need a lot of it!

I found myself tapping my foot while listening to Dwight Yoakam's 'A Long Way Home' on a pair of great bookshelf speakers, Infinity's Primus 150's. The R15's were fine, keeping the piano sweet and the vocals clear, although I did notice a little bit of harshness at times. And no, it wasn't Dwight's fault. The bass didn't strees or try too hard at medium levels, and I was impressed. The Primus 150's, however, were more generous. Everything was more rich, more clean, no distortion on larger levels, and the soundfield was more open. Vocals were so close to perfect on these, that I wondered if this was a prank. Nope.

Regardless of their Dynamic Balanced tweeters and drivers, which still give an inmpressive frequency response of 65 to 20,000 HZ, the R15's just don't open up the same way the Primus 150's do.

The best places they work is either in a small room (of course), or as rear surround speakers. A great main speaker for your home theater to compliment these properly are the R30 Towers, while the CSI 30 centre takes care of the dialouge and central sounds very well, and to top it off, get a good subwoofer, say from, Infinity. They have some of the best quick and tight firing drivers on their subs. Polk's subs fire a little slow and sloppy.

I can't give these little Polk's a four star rating. For a moment I'd like to be that generous because they are a pair of neat little speakers, and they really don't dissapoint. When they first came out several years back, they were seriously overpriced. Since then, the prices on these have dropped to a much better amount. So, with all that said, they aren't a pair of speakers you should run like mad to your local retailer for. But, if anyone asked if they were still a good pair of speakers for the current price of $200? I'd say, 'Oh, you bet!'

Going from speakers that had no bass to some that do, what a difference!!

My wife bought me Rush's 30th Anniversary DVD for Christmas and I didn't realize what I was missing until I plugged these speakers in.

I've always wanted to own a set of Polk speakers and now I do!

I would buy another set of Polk and day of the week. The sound is just incredible, especially for such a small cabinet.

Highly recommend!

I have never heard such a phenomenal sound from such a reasonably priced bookshelf speaker in my life. The clarity and response is actually more pronounced than my larger Polk RT-55's. I would recommend these speakers without reservation. The best bang for the buck I have encountered in my 30 or so years of audiophiledom!! Thank you Polk engineers!